In a dense forest it can be easier to walk along a downed tree than to fight your way though the brush, if a tree happens to be lying in your direction. It will be covered with ferns and moss, if the place is dark and moist, and each step releases new smells old and familiar, and it’s easy to lose track of how far you’ve wandered and the size of the tree, its precise diameter, so that when you hit a rotten, hollow spot and your foot plunges through the bark into nothing, there is an instant when you’re not sure if you have simply stepped onto something soft, or if you are in for a long fall; if you will only kneel briefly in salmon berries or arrive in a dark place containing a rat or — why not?– bear.

Due to a favorable constellation of various circumstances, I was able to take the train to work today. I’d forgotten how much I prefer sitting in a train, reading a book, to driving. I like it about a hundred times better, I would say. Except for the extra 90 minutes it takes me on average, every day, and the getting bronchitis twice every winter part. But we had a pleasant, balmy morning today and my shoes gradually covered with yellow pollen as I walked to work from the station, until it looked as if I’d been strolling through a [some yellow stone] quarry.

A lot of construction was going on a few blocks up the street, and the sidewalk was closed on my side so I walked right up the street, which was backed up with morning traffic at a standstill. One of the buildings being remodeled was about six stories tall and a tunnel made of plastic drums the size of garbage cans extended like a grey proboscis from the roof to a dumpster on the street. There was a loud rumble and I turned in time to see a grinning deconstruction worker dumping the last of a wheelbarrow of debris down the tube. It reminded me how much I’ve enjoyed jobs that enabled me to make loud noises, like one summer job on a demolition crew where I got to knock down walls in urban office buildings with a sledgehammer, and walk through the city streets afterwards, dusty and exhausted, glaring at yuppies and flexing my young muscles.

Parking is at a premium here at all times, and all the closures due to the construction did not help. Beside a tobacco store, the sidewalk was only wide enough for one because of all the cars parked on it. A man was coming the other way. He was closer to the narrow part, meaning he could have entered, and I would have had to wait. However, we both hesitated at the same time, typical Beta male behavior. I saw him hesitate, but he didn’t seem to notice my hesitation, so I asked myself “What would Alpha do” and continued on, pretending that I had not also hesitated, and he politely waited for me to pass through the narrow part before continuing on.

The rest of the way, I thought about Victor Pelevin and his book The Life of Insects which arrived in the mail yesterday from Amazon. I’d made it to p. 70 on the train, thinking the whole time things like “Pelevin gets it,” and “what a fine writer,” and “good translators are my heroes.” I wish I could achieve that bleak magic in my own writing.

He reminds me a lot of Bulgakov.

The compound eye of certain insects is a beautiful thing, as are the stars that come out at dusk and a gentle evening breeze on a hot night.

But, beautiful or not, if you’re big, and fly into my house at night and don’t stop buzzing, I’m going to swat your goddamned ass.

As a giant wasp and a giant fly learned the hard way last night.

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Be the first to crack the code!
[Via Stavros]

There’s a whole lotta warnin’ going on.
[Via Aardvark, where I also found this.]

Freedom is slavery.

Maybe it was just the endorphins left over from my surge of relief over escaping alive from my dental hygiene session yesterday and my first-ever time playing music with other adults (accompanying a recorder ensemble on Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen”, it was wonderful) but on my way to work this morning, watching the green spring scenery roll past it occurred to me that were someone to return from wherever it is the dead go when they die, they would weep with joy at the sight of a gravel road running through a green field into green woods.

The yellow pollen covering my Dobl